Hide and Seek

Hide and Seek

You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.
(Jeremiah 29:13)

The other day I saw Jesus in the cellophane wrapped around my loaf of bread.  Not His face or anything like that, but I saw Him in the shape of a heart.  I was reminded that He provides for my needs.  I also caught Him outside of my daughter’s school.  That time He looked like a mom hugging her son.  He looked like a boy who didn’t want to go to school and He looked like a mom who didn’t want to let that boy go.  I saw him today in a tiny puddle that filled a heart-shaped hole in the concrete.  He filled that heart-shaped hole until it overflowed.  I heard a story about Him, too, when a friend told me about one brother telling another brother to wear a helmet while skiing.  In that story He saved a life . . . again.

Seeing Jesus is a lot like playing hide and seek.  I spent the first 30 years of my life hiding.  And then, one day, I peeked.  I peeked around the corner hoping to be found.  To be captured.  To be brought in to the group of others who had been found.  Who were together.   And, the day I peeked, was the day I finally heard Him call, “All-ye!  All-ye!  In come free!”  And that’s true, isn’t it?  He doesn’t ask us to come to Him with anything.  He just wants us all to come to Him.  Free.

It’s because I dared to respond – to be found – that I now am the seeker.  I look for Jesus in other people and other places and other things.  Seeing his “love gifts” like heart-shaped cellophane and heart-shaped holes and hugs and helmets is a privilege.  I am praying for the desire to see Him more – to really see where He needs to be seen by others.  To open the door for those who want to come in.

Where do you see Jesus?

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find;
knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives,
and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. (Matthew 7:7-8)